Monday, December 18, 2017

The western juniper is actually considered an invasive species in Oregon, which seems terribly sad to me since they are so interesting looking. I spent some time taking pictures of them, along with other Northern California and Oregon trees. I decided upon a juniper for this piece, not just because I love the gnarly way they look, but also because the song Jennifer Juniper kept running through my mind!

This is a pretty simple piece when you get down to it. Draw a tree or something else that you love. Chose the colors that remind you of the place. Assemble!

2. On a wet piece of heavy watercolor paper, use foam brushes to paint around the outer edges with Phthalo blue acrylic paint. All of the paints that I used were diluted with quite a bit of water in order to get some binder separation. Texture the blue before it dries with a paper towel. Let it dry before proceeding.

4. Rip out the pattern paper tree. Iron it in place, using parchment paper to protect your iron and board. Do any final color adjustments. Spray again with acrylic spray, and top the entire piece with Matte medium.

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Copyright 2017 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. The tutorial only may be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

5. Use a ratty brush to stipple in "leaves", making sure the tops are uneven across the horizon. I used 2 parts of the Hansa yellow medium to 1 part of the Green gold. I topped all of it with a bit of Iridescent gold, and once everything was dry, I gave it all a final coat of Matte medium and a few coats of Krylon spray.

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Copyright 2017 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. The tutorial only may be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

Thursday, December 07, 2017

One of the best parts about abstract painting and mixed media work is that you just never know what's going to pop up next! I'll be starting to post a series of work like this in the new year, based on particle physics, geometry, electricity, and anything else sciencey that happens to catch my fancy. You can blame it on my being married to a particle physicist if you'd like...

Copyright 2017 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. The tutorial only may be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

Monday, November 27, 2017

This is the third piece in my small series on trees with personalities. For this one, I once more used the techniques outlined in the piece Longing, so I'll let you check that out if you need the steps, and I'll just give you a list of the acrylic colors used here. This one was inspired by a well-known quote from JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings:

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."

Copyright 2017 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. The tutorial only may be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

Monday, November 20, 2017

I got a lot of enjoyment out of painting Longing a few weeks ago, so I decided to do a small series featuring trees with personalities. My second one was inspired by the W.B.Yeats poem The Cat and the Moon:

"When two close kindred meet,

What better than call a dance?"

The technique used is basically the same as for the painting Longing with only a small color variation. I used Phthalo blue and Dioxazine purple for the sky rather than Phthalo blue and Phthalo green.

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Copyright 2017 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. The tutorial only may be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

Monday, November 13, 2017

I wanted a somber feel, but rich colors, so a ended up doing an underpainting to help guide my choices. The paints I used were acrylics...you are welcome to change up the colors to suit yourself!

1. Lightly spray a piece of heavy watercolor paper with water, and use a large brush to lay in waterproof black India ink. Keep it darkest around the edges, and leave a spot with no ink at all. Blend the ink to get a nice gradient. Allow to dry completely.

2. Use a mix of black gesso and white gesso to make a light gray. Use a foam brush with the gray mix to pull full strength heavy bodied Phthalo blue and Dioxazine purple down the length of the paper. Spray lightly with water if needed. Adjust the colors. While the piece is still damp, use a pipette to drip diluted black ink from the top. Allow to dry.

3. Drip full-strength India ink from the top. Use the pipette to draw in some branches. Take a scruffy, beat-up brush and dab in "moon dust" around the tops of the trees, with a mix of white gesso and Hansa yellow light.When dry, top with several light coats of Krylon acrylic spray.

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Copyright 2017 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. The tutorial only may be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

Tuesday, November 07, 2017

I decided to see if I could interject some more personality into my ink trees. That involved controlling the ink more than when I was just letting it drip from the top. But I still used a pipette to draw them in! The background is acrylic paint.

5. Use white gesso to make a few of the ink swirls cross in front of the tree. This helps to give more depth and more of a sense that the swirl is traveling deeper into the picture to the farther tree. Top it with several thin coats of Krylon clear acrylic spray.

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Copyright 2017 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. The tutorial only may be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

3. I used pieces of painters tape (low tack) and card stock to form the masks. After adhering them to the center of the piece, I used a foam roller to lightly roll white gesso around the outside, just enough to mute the colors but not enough to totally obscure them.

4. Slip out the card stock mask, but keep the painters tape. Add more tape around the central rectangle that was previously under the card stock. Just line up the new tape with the edges...it's easy! Roll the center portion with Manganese blue.

Copyright 2017 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. The tutorial only may be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

Monday, October 23, 2017

You can get a lovely watercolor look with acrylic paints by thinning them enough. Certain colors are problematic when you add water, because they will separate and the binder breaks down. But to counteract this, I painted them on top of slightly moist gesso. Here's how it worked:

Prepare a selection of acrylic paints, placing a dab into small paper cups and adding water until they are extremely thin. I used these colors:

Prepare your watercolor paper, 140 lb cold pressed, with white gesso. I use foam brushes for this. You might want to test your thinned paints on a scrap piece of paper with gesso before committing to the full-sized piece, to make sure you are getting the colors you want. Thinned acrylics can be a bit deceiving!

When the gessoed paper is still a bit damp, use pipettes to drip the paints lengthwise along the paper, holding it up vertically. Flip the paper to the side, holding it up horizontally, and allow the paints to drip and mingle. Use a spray bottle if needed to encourage more running.

Allow the piece to dry thoroughly and spray it with clear acrylic fixative.
Spray lightly with water and use a pipette to drip black waterproof India ink for trees. Add "branches" by drawing out some of the ink in the "trunks" with the tip of an empty pipette. Dry thoroughly and spray again with fixative.

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Copyright 2017 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. The tutorial only may be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

Monday, October 16, 2017

This painting was very loosely inspired by a gorgeous copper beech tree that lives next door to me. It is a truly glorious tree, but since it is not a native of New England, it is always about four to five weeks out of sync with all the other trees. Just when we think we're done raking...you guessed it! I suppose it is lucky that it is so glorious :-)

When it was completely dry, I tinted up some tar gel with Red oxide paint in an applicator bottle, and used that to sketch in the tree. Accuracy was NOT an issue, just a general impression. You need to let tar gel dry on its own...it doesn't always react well to a heat gun. So put it aside, work on something else, and come back the next day.

1. Use matte medium on a foam brush to lay down your torn text pieces on the watercolor paper. Don't overthink it. Leave the top unsealed as much as possible.

2. Use a foam brush or sponge to add diluted (with water) Yellow ochre over most of the surface. Let it puddle a bit and sink in unevenly.

3. Add Red oxide next, and finish with Quinacridone gold, added with your fingers in just the spots you want. Let it dry thoroughly. Iron flat if needed.

4. Spritz the piece lightly with water. Using a pipette, drip in your trees and add some extra branches where you want. Let dry and spray with acrylic spray.

Spring and Fall
By Gerard Manley Hopkins

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

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Copyright 2017 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. The tutorial only may be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

Monday, October 02, 2017

Think about all the different colors you could use for a mixed media painting like this, depending upon the season! I'll share the colors I used for this one, but feel free to make substitutions that suit you.

1. Starting with a sheet of watercolor paper, drip black India ink from a small pipette to form the "trees". Let it dry thoroughly and give it a light spray with acrylic fixative.

2. Mix up the colors you want to use. I place them in small cups and dilute them with quite a bit of water to get the thin consistency. No acrylic medium this time!

3. Spritz the surface with water. Use pipettes (one per color) to add lines of color between the "trees". Spray more if the paint doesn't move the way you want it to.

4. Let it dry and adjust the colors if needed.

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Copyright 2017 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. The tutorial only may be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

Sharon's main goal, I feel, is to teach you how to tell a story with your quilts, how to make every part of the process serve the art. To that end, she starts with an overview of the encrusted crazy quilting style, discusses how to design that journey for your viewer, and then moves to piecing and stitching. The second half of the book teaches you how to do beautiful variations on basic stitches and how to incorporate beads, buttons, and more.

I don't often quote parts of the books that I review, but I just want you to have an example of one of Sharon's many many (many!) tips that you will find in this book. I recommend it for beginners and experienced quilters alike:

"A good, quick way of finding a color scheme is to select a favorite patterned fabric. The trick is to find fabrics that match the colors in the fabric. Once you have about five colors, you will have your color scheme for a block. Look for fabrics that match a favorite photograph. As you piece a block, don’t forget to select lace, thread, beads, and buttons to harmonize with the colors in the fabric patches. Think about color not only as you piece your project but also during the hand embroidery and embellishing phases."

Monday, September 25, 2017

I used a batik-style background for this piece. The instructions can be found at the link above. It's super-easy to do, using waxed paper and some non-waterproof black ink. After adhering the textured paper to your substrate and ironing it, I would advise adding a few coats of acrylic spray to prevent any running.

After drying thoroughly, I spritzed the piece with water and used regular water proof India ink in a pipette to drip the trees and add thinner branches. I let it dry and then adjusted the paint colors as needed.

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Copyright 2017 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. The tutorial only may be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Tutorials covering topics like wearable art, beading, beaded jewelry, etc generally reside on the Beading Arts blog. Every so often, I like to give you a list of them here in case any of the topics interest you! Here is the first installment in chronological order:

Monday, September 18, 2017

Last week I talked a little about adding some depth to an abstract by shading the elements in a way that draws the eye into the picture rather than just across it. Today's piece uses the same technique with a different color palette, and in a much larger size so that the elements could be spread out a bit more. I wanted to see if that would make a difference in the perception of depth.

The next step is to drip in the "middle distance" elements, this time mixing the white ink with a bit less turquoise. When they were dry, I sponged over just the area with the existing trees.

For the last area, the "foreground", I used plain white ink with no added turquoise. Once dry, I sponged the entire piece with the Iridescent copper.

This composition breaks a "rule" by putting the focal point right smack in the middle, but I'm ok with that. More bothersome to me than the central placement is that the focal tree is more realistic than the others, and I do think that was a mistake.

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Copyright 2017 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. The tutorial only may be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.